Administrative System of the Marathas c7.s5.9

c7.s5.9

As the average British Indian reader is not sufficiently aware of the importance of the Portuguese sources of Maratha History, I may here briefly indicate how much we can learn about the army and navy of Shivaji's successors even from published Portuguese works. Almost all the important records of a political character have been published by Cunha Rivara, Balsemão, Phillipe Nerry Xavier, Ismael Gracias and others. Most of these published records have found a place in the monumental work of Judice Biker. They afford us an insight not only into the military and naval organisation of the Marathas but also in their court life and civil institutions. We get an interesting account of Sambhaji's campaign against Goa in Ismael Gracias's *Uma Dona Portugueza no corte do Grao Mogol*.¹ In the appendices of the same work we come across a few original letters about the maritime activities of the Angrias. Ismael Gracias has published almost all papers relating to the Maratha conquest of Bassein in *O Oriente Portugues* of which he was long the sole editor and principal contributor. No more important and reliable account of the Maratha military system can anywhere be obtained than that supplied by an exceptionally brilliant Viceroy, the Marquis of Alorna, in the instructions that he left for his successor, the Marquis of Tavora. The original Portuguese work was published more than seventy years ago under the able editorship of F. N. Xavier and a few extracts were quoted by Danvers in his *Portuguese in India*. The entire work has, however, been rendered into English by the present writer. The Marquis of Alorna did not confine himself to military matters alone, and his remarks upon the peculiar organisation of the Maratha empire and its inherent weakness deserve careful consideration. An estimate of the military and naval power of the Marathas is found also in *Instrucçoes do Dom Jose I*, the authorship of which is rightly attributed to the celebrated Marquis of Pombal. Pombal had no first-hand knowledge of Maratha affairs, but he must have found ample materials for his subject in the reports and correspondence from India. Space does not permit me to deal with this subject in detail here, nor am I in a position to give a list of the interesting manuscript accounts of naval encounters between the Portuguese and the Marathas, preserved at Lisbon and Evora. Curious readers are referred to the works of Cunha Rivara and Ismael Gracias. It is superfluous to say that the unpublished records of Goa have not all been exhaustively studied and they may be made to throw light where darkness now prevails. The Portuguese Government have appointed a distinguished Indian scholar as Curator of their archives at Goa, and there is every reason to hope that his contribution to our knowledge of Maratha history will not be less important than that made by his predecessor and teacher J. A. Ismael Gracias.